Listed buildings in Great Britain mapped

English Heritage, an independent public body funded by the British taxpayer, maintains a list of several hundred thousand historically significant structures in England. Structures are graded according to importance – Grade I being the highest.

A new interactive map on the English Heritage website displays the locations of all these sites. Everything from cathedrals and castles to red telephone boxes and street lamps. Zoom-in or search by location. There’s also a option that allows you to click on a structure to bring up further details.

British Listed Buildings

It’s not the first time these buildings have been mapped. Last year, using Freedom of information requests, Mark Goodge managed to get his hands on location data for the 3 constituent countries of Great Britain – England, Scotland and Wales.

He’s put all this information on britishlistedbuildings.co.uk . with options for users to leave comments and upload photos. The mapping part of the site is still in beta, but perfectly functional, if not particularly pretty.

It’s interesting how times have changed. An attempt, nearly a decade ago, to put a complete search-able database of low resolution photos of listed buildings online proved controversial. Some private owners were unhappy about their properties being highlighted in this way – claims were made that such information would become a ‘burglar’s charter’. I guess it just shows how services like Google Street View have altered peoples’ perception of risk from such data being put in the public domain.